currently there's 37mb of fennec data on my primary storage, by far the phattest app data according to DiskUsage app.
this should be kept on the sd card.
what is this data? cache? user data? is there a way to clear the cache?

(In reply to comment #0)
> currently there's 37mb of fennec data on my primary storage, by far the
> phattest app data according to DiskUsage app.
>
> this should be kept on the sd card.
Android should allow this using: Settings > Applications > Fennec > Move to SD Card
Might only be for newer versions of Android
> what is this data?
Your profile
> cache? user data?
No cache for Fennec. Most likely it is the places DB.
> is there a way to clear the cache?
You can clear your profile using the Settings app as well _or_ using Fennec. In Fennec, use Preferences > Clear private data

Re-opening.
(In reply to comment #1)
> (In reply to comment #0)
> > currently there's 37mb of fennec data on my primary storage, by far the
> > phattest app data according to DiskUsage app.
> >
> > this should be kept on the sd card.
>
> Android should allow this using: Settings > Applications > Fennec > Move to SD
> Card
>
> Might only be for newer versions of Android
Yes, for 2.2 and up IIRC.
I'd already done this. DiskUsage shows that Fennec is 128k in the Apps2SD folder on the card. Fennec is 31.6mb on internal storage.
DiskUsage also says whether the file is "data" or "apk". It says "apk" for the tiny bit on SD card, and "data" for the stuff on internal storage. This confused me.
I opened the application properties for Fennec and it says close the same numbers.
> > is there a way to clear the cache?
>
> You can clear your profile using the Settings app as well _or_ using Fennec. In
> Fennec, use Preferences > Clear private data
Uhh, that would be bad. If CPD means the same thing as on desktop Firefox, It'd blow away a bunch of stuff I want. This is very very different than clearing the browser cache.

(In reply to comment #2)
> Re-opening.
OK, we can investigate.
> > > is there a way to clear the cache?
> >
> > You can clear your profile using the Settings app as well _or_ using Fennec. In
> > Fennec, use Preferences > Clear private data
>
> Uhh, that would be bad. If CPD means the same thing as on desktop Firefox, It'd
> blow away a bunch of stuff I want. This is very very different than clearing
> the browser cache.
Fennec has zero browser cache. The profile size is entirely driven by data in places and cookies (a little) databases.
CPD means the same thing as desktop Firefox, so be wary.

Talked to mbrubeck about this on IRC a bit, and apparently it's by-design for security reasons that the user profile isn't stored on the SD card, since the SD card isn't protected by the Android system, meaning other applications can read/write into that space.
While I understand that instinct, and further understand that the newer generations of Android phones are not as limited as the Nexus One and its contemporaries in terms of the internal/SD memory split, I can also tell you that as a Nexus One owner, this really does prevent me from using Fennec as intended. My choices are:
- Fennec + Sync and a limited number of other applications
- Fennec w/o Sync and my applications
- No Fennec and my applications
Possible remedies are:
- move the profile to the SD card for all phones, in a "salt"ed directory to obfuscate it a bit (note: we have the same security risk on desktop, here)
- move the profile to the SD card for certain models of phones
- add an option to trim the local history/bookmark DB to a certain size (right now my DB is large, I suspect, because it's Syncing with my desktop DB)
Or, of course, we could ignore this problem entirely. That's an option, but we should understand the cost of that option. Do we know what the spectrum of internal memory sizes of phones that meet Fennec's minimum requirements?

Comment on attachment 509983[details][diff][review]
patch
Since the profiles.ini is stored in the profile folder itself, I guess it would be moved to the new location. All profiles should be stored relative to the root profile folder, so the "IsRelative" flag in the profiles.ini file will not need to be updated. Any absolute profile paths should "just work".

Before the move to SD Card, I have:
Total: 21.62MB
Application: 13.79MB
Data: 7.83MB
After the move to SD Card, I have:
Total: 160KB
Application: 128KB
Data: 32.00KB
This is on the Motorola Droid, using yesterday's trunk build of Fennec.
Does this data make sense? How can Fennec only occupy 160KB on the SD Card?